


Life, but Not Quite as We Knew It

by karrenia_rune



Category: Dresden Files (TV)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-15
Updated: 2011-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:28:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bedraggled and lost girl comes to the door of Harry Dresden's home and establishment, but its Bob that she bonds with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life, but Not Quite as We Knew It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drakonlily (krayxlidlon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/krayxlidlon/gifts).



Disclaimer: Dresden Files and all characters who appear here or are mentioned do not belong to me, they are the original creations of Jim Butcher, and SCI Fi Channel. Miranda Belmont is my own creation.

"Life, but Not Quite as We Knew It" by karrenia

There are times when even a disembodied ghost needs to feel some semblance of physical contact. After several centuries of this limbo-like existence, Bob Hrothbert still retains most of the wisdom, knowledge and hard-won experience that he had accumulated over the best part of the last ten centuries.

The only problem with that particular arrangement, is that fact that Harry Dresden did not seem to fully appreciate the times when he had to utilize his unique skills, well Harry did appreciate the help . `Do I want more than that?'  
Granted, most of what he has needed has been filtered and diluted over time, and after all if he still had had a physical body, he might say that his physical skills had grown a bit rusty; or to be more accurate, like a prisoner whose muscles had atrophied from disuse after years of being confined in a jail cell.

When he got depressed Bob discovered that did have an rather regrettable habit of making random objects in Harry's home and office space float in mid air.  
One afternoon, while engaged in that very activity and brooding over his state of limbo existence the peal of the front door bell distracted him out of his gloomy thoughts and he overheard Harry greeting whoever it was at the door and ushering them inside.

Another client or perhaps Harry paying the delivery person for a pizza; whatever the case, it certainly would come as a welcome distraction from his own gloomy company.  
While Bob, as ghost could no longer savor the taste of food and drink, he still remembered what `that' was like, and even the smell of freshly baked Chicago pizza recalled what it was like to be able to enjoy food and drink.

So maybe it wasn't a pizza delivery, it could have another client; either way, it came as a welcome change of pace in his day.  
Bob let his hold on the objects to slip not caring that collection of knick-knacks, coffee cups, coasters, and belt buckles to fall into a disordered and noisy clatter to the floor of the office.

Meanwhile Harry had ushered in a small-boned, brown-haired and brown-eyed girl into the foyer of the house and had offered her a cup of coffee. In the off-hand way of one who had come to accept his role as the advisor and often times the observe, Bob realized that the girl could not have been any older than eighteen or perhaps in her early twenties. She had big, wide brown eyes and her hair hung down low over her eyes.  
Going intangible and invisible to any who were not sensitive to the presence of the paranormal or magic, Bob circled around and above, listening without appearing to listen on their conversation.

"I don't know if I can help you, Miranda," Harry said, "But I certainly will try," Harry replied.

The girl addressed as Miranda shook her head and reached forward to grasp her coffee cup in both hands, but she was shaking so much that she ended up sloshing the hot liquid around with managing to get any of it past her lips and into her dry throat that she set back on the table. "I'm sorry," she muttered. "I'm not usually this scatter-brained."

"It's quite all right," Harry replied, his hands clasped in his lap and a reassuring and encouraging smile on his face.

"You're not just saying that, to humor me, are you," asked Miranda wistfully.

"My family believes that I need help, professional help. You know, the kind where they think you're crazy until you get a certificate that says that you completely sane..." she trailed off and reached for her coffee cup once more; this time managing to down a good swallow and it appeared to steady her a bit more.

"Do you think you're crazy?" Harry asked, knowing as he did so that it was probably not the best of lead-in questions that he had ever come up with, but, at the moment, it was the best that he could come up with, under the circumstances.

"Everything that I was taught to believe and everything I learned in school, tells me that it's crazy to even think that what I've been seeing and sensing," Miranda sighed. "Well, it's crazy. It can't be real."

"Why come to me?" Harry asked, as much as he wanted to help, he need something more concrete to go on than he had heard from her so far, and as he stood up to find something that they could eat along in addition to their coffee, while he mulled over everything that he had been told and more importantly what he had not been told.

Miranda certainly did not seem the type to make up stories of seeing things to attract attention to for a lark or for some pulp magazine. No, this was something more than that; he just wished that he could put his finger on exactly what is that was setting of alarm bells of paranormal activity in his own mind.  
He found a box of apricot coffee cake and returned to the sofa where Miranda sat, idly stirring a spoon in her now cold coffee. ""Would you care for some cake?"

"No thank you. I'm not hungry," muttered Miranda distractedly combing her fingers through her hair.

"Miranda, I have to tell you, that if we're going to get anywhere, we need to get down to the nitty-gritty of what's going on here."

"If this is you way of amping your asking price for your services," she retorted and then sighed and reached up to finger-comb through the strands of her brown hair. "I. I'm sorry I said that.  
I thought it was like being back in the field."

"Were you in the mental health field?"

"No, but I was a few credits short of being accredited, and then things changed."

"How?"

"I wish I knew. It was like something or someone turned a key inside of me, and all of a sudden I was aware of an entirely new set of sensations and emotions; I could be warm and comfortable, snuggled up with a good book, in front of a roaring fire, and yet feel a cascading and inexplicable wave of cold."

"Go on," Harry encouraged in an undertone.

"Objects would move around and no one would be there to move them. I really am going crazy!"  
Harry nodded. "If it helps, I can personally attest that you are certainly not going crazy, but I do think that if you had waited much longer, you nearly could have gone stark raving mad."

"I feel so much better," Miranda muttered.

"What you're suffering from, if you want me to put into clinical terms, is the ability to sensitize and or empathize with apparitions and disembodied spirits." Harry smiled. "In other words, you're seeing ghosts."

"Ghosts. You have gotta be kidding me!"

"In fact, right at this very moment there is a ghost present. Ordinarily, anyone can sense a spirit if they aren't manifested, whether or not its that feeling of intense cold, or that the air's suddenly been charged around you. There are people called Sensitive who can see or hear unmanifested presences: some are born with the ability to see/hear, some can sense a little more*latent's, they're called*kind of like seeing shadows or being able to tell where they are in an area and some have some sort of perilous event happen, a near death experience or some equally traumatic occurrence."

"I don't really remember anything traumatic occurring, but I do remember seeing and hearing things out of the corner of my eye, sometimes at early morning or late evening; but then when inspected at close range, they would disappear," said Miranda wistfully.

"Can you sense anything now?" asked Harry softly, so as not to disturb her concentration.

Miranda collapsed back into the sofa and pulled up her legs so that her entire body was on top of the sofa, hugging her arms around her mid section, and closed her eyes. Against what her own upbringing, schooling, and common sense were telling, she had been through too much not to believe. At first a fog or some kind of invisible energy field appeared to resist her tentative probing, but as she pushed a little bit harder it finally gave way.

Then it was as if her mind had entered a terrain almost completely covered in a ground-hugging morning fog while she searched for any kind of familiar landmark, feature, or structure to hold onto; before she realized that another presence had sensed her and was curious enough to come check it out.

Bob sensed the probe and while he physically could not help in appreciable manner, he could reach out with his own presence and powers and extend an invisible mental hand to the girl searching within the fog of his own limbo existence.

When contact was made at last it came as a shock to both of them.

Miranda gasped, feeling the mental touch as if it sent sparks cascading up and down her or own nerve endings. At first she was afraid, but as it went on and did not threaten or harm her, she pushed a little more.

Bob responded to the probe out of curiosity and to keep his mind off his own tendency to brood when not involved in Harry's cases, and while he was magically attached to his skull and could not stray far from it for any appreciable length of time; here was an opportunity to interact with someone who could actually feel the presence of apparitions and poltergeists.

In the back of his mind, Bob considered whether it would be best to continue the mental communication or whether it would better to expend the energy required to manifest and reveal his physical presence, well, as close as he ever came to that.

'Really,’ he thought,' after all this time, I can still brood with the best of them. However, will I allow this opportunity to slip through my fingers simply because of one singular personality glitch that I have learned to cultivate over the centuries?'  
Miranda sighed and relaxed her rigid position, unfolding like an piece of Japanese origami, and then reached up to rub a throbbing ache at her temples. "Well, if that didn't turn me into a believer in the existence of the paranormal, that certainly did. Mr. Dresden, did you know that you have a ghost as a roommate?"

Harry smiled his trade-mark, slightly off-center reassuring smile. "I know. I just wanted to see if you could sense him. If you could, then I wanted to introduce you to him. But I think you've already met."

Bob materialized at that moment and smiled. "Hello, Miranda."

"Hi, Bob, or do you prefer to be called Robert?" Miranda greeted the now visible ghost.

"Bob, will suffice." He smiled. Whistling a half-remembered tune from one of his favorite movies from Harry's stash of black and white classics, he smiled and said. "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

It hardly seemed appropriate, or even suitable to the dignity that he had acquired during his life and now his afterlife, to brood over what he no longer had, and through his own actions, could no longer hope to attain. Miranda, appeared to be a smart, intelligent woman, and he had someone to talk to you; but he really should give her the freedom to explore this newfound relationship to the best of both of their abilities; and not frighten her away.

Miranda managed a shaky but still confident grin in return. "I recognize the quote, isn't that from one of those classic black and white movies..."Casablanca, " am I right."

"You are indeed, Ms. Belmont," Bob replied.


End file.
